Planet of Ice, Hearts of Fire
by Triple Crown
Summary: Kylo Ren and Rey meet again. This time, it will be just the two of them, forced to rely on each other to survive a harsh wilderness. Rey knows in her mind that Kylo Ren is a monster, but that doesn't stop her from feeling an overwhelming urge to protect and trust him. Will she find light in him or darkness within herself?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

She rattled the restraints violently. The secruity droids turned their heads to inspect her, but returned to their forward facing postures when they observed she was still firmly locked in place. The imposing, humanoid droids held long staffs with pulsating electrical energy on both ends. They took little notice of her except when she attempted to break free.

Rey found herself once again strapped to a grungy metal slab. Luke had warned her that the First Order was suspicious of the trail of chaos she had left behind when he sent her offworld for these training missions. She had thought she was taking every precaution, but somehow someone had followed and ambushed her inside her ship. Where she was now, she had no idea; only that the assassin droids had First Order insignia painted on them.

She heard the thudding of heavy boots before the doors ever slid open. She hadn't felt his presence the entire time. Luke had said some force users were so powerful that they could cloak themselves from others. He suspected that was how Emperor Palpatine decieved the Jedi in the days before the Empire. Now, though, she felt him wash over her in a sea of tormented rage. He filled her senses with a sickness that felt like disgust mingled with a tiny bit of sympathy.

Kylo Ren, as the monster liked to call himself, strode through the doors triumphant in his conquest. The mask he wore was meant to be intimidating. To strike fear and take away his humanity. But she had seen the face behind it. He was a monster, yes, but she called him that because of the atrocities he had committed. If his face was the only part of him she had ever known, then she would have thought of him as a fierce but brooding stranger. It might have been a face preteen Rey dreamed of in her hovel back on Jakku.

"You can struggle all you like," he announced. "But you won't break free. And your mind tricks won't work on droids either. I underestimated you once before, but I won't make the same mistake twice."

"I expect you'll make a different mistake," Rey spat at his feet. The assassin droids' heads tilted toward the floor, deciding if her saliva might be a threat. It was only for a second, before they turned their gaze straight ahead again.

"Take care of how you speak to a Knight of Ren, Jedi. You are a Jedi now, aren't you? You're wearing those robes." He looked at her, in the tan and brown robes that weren't drastically different from her attire she had worn in the desert. "Supreme Leader Snoke wants you alive, you should know, but I can make you suffer a thousand different ways without killing you." The hooded figure put a hand to his face. "You're thinking about my face. You can't remember every detail, but you're trying to piece together the memories from our last meeting. I should never have shown you that face. It belongs to a dead man. This mask is Kylo Ren's face. My face."

He was inside her head again. She needed to shut him out. She had reluctantly told the story to Luke when she recounted the events leading up to their meeting. Violation had been the strongest word she could muster. She did not want him seeing her innermost thoughts. Feeling her emotions as she experienced them. Luke had told her that his master, Obiwan Kenobi, had been strong in the ways of mind tricks and sensing through the force. Luke told her to embrace the talent she had, but it felt so wrong. She could not do that to another person as he was Kylo Ren was doing it to her now.

Rey pushed back.

Kylo Ren pushed harder.

And harder.

Not hard enough.

He couldn't hold on. He had been trained, but he lacked focus. He was like a child yelling, "Mine, mine, mine," as he stumbled into her head. He had no restraint. Just blind, jealous emotion. Suddenly, against her better judgement, she envied those emotions. She could feel how free they made him. All of her restraint made her feel tied down. Grounded, yes, but trapped. Whereas he knew how to fly. He could soar, untethered and unchained, like she had been all her life. To survive the harsh scavenger life, she needed to be vigilant and cunning. Reckless selfishness was something she could not afford. However, when she had given into those emotions and refused to sell BB-8 for a fortune's worth of rations, it had been the best choice of her life.

No, she was weakening. She had gotten into his head for an instant, but he threatened to pull her in with her. That would have been no better than him being in her head. Certainly worse. The Jedi-in-training regained her composure and at last separated their tangled minds. The black figure fell to his knees with labored breaths. She could not see his skin, but he must have been perspiring as she was. The Force flowed through all living things and a Jedi could tap into it, sometimes to extend their own life. A Jedi might also kill himself if he could not handle the power.

Kylo Ren pushed himself to his feet. He studied her for a moment, his chest still rising and falling unsteadily. She didn't see the blow coming, but all at once she couldn't breathe. It was as if he had punched her in the stomach. Rey couldn't bend over in the restraints. She just lay there, tears welling up in her eyes. How could she protect herself from him when he could use the force to hit her without warning? The last time she had been so helpless she was just an abandoned little girl. She had promised herself that she would never be on the other end of a bully's wrath, as she had been growing up on Jakku.

Rey heard the doors slide open and closed again. The crying didn't last very long. Without Kylo Ren in the room, she did not feel as vulnerable. Something in his presence weakened her when she knew she needed to be stronger than normal. It was only her and the pair of assassin droids at that point.

It was acceptable to be weak. It was acceptable to stumble and fall. "When I learned that Darth Vader was my father," Rey recalled Luke's words. "I almost gave up on everything. My whole galaxy had been turned upside down. If my friends hadn't needed my help I might have disappeared then, just as I did when I lost Ben. I don't think I was ever serious about turning to the dark side, but I did imagine doing it just to be with my father," he confessed to her by the cookfire. "Rey, it is okay to feel as though you have fallen at times, but you must overcome it in the end and stand stronger than ever."

The droids stood like statues. As long as Rey did not move, they would not. The best way to beat them would be to take them unaware. Rey closed her eyes. Moving objects with the Force was not yet something she had mastered. Releasing the restraints through all the intricate mechanical devices that kept them in place would be nearly impossible.

She felt for the restraints anyway. It did no good. Maybe a fully fledged Jedi could feel objects with the Force as if touching them with bare fingertips, but she could not. At best, it was like being blind with hands that were asleep while trying to type on a keyboard two sizes too small.

The frustration was building in her. She could not use the force to manually open the restraints on her wrists and ankles, nor could she access the control panel just to the left of her guards. Rey slammed her palms against the metal slab beneath her. There was a whirring of gears as mechanical heads with gray faces and red eyes inspected the prisoner. They still held onto the electrically charged staffs.

The answer had been staring her in the face the whole time. The prisoner furrowed her brow in concentration. Sweat dripped into her eyes, but she needed to endure the stinging if everything were to go just right. She felt out for the droid. There.

All at once, the droid lurched forward, pulled by an invisible hand on the metal rod in its hands. The droid's iron grip held tightly, but Rey did not need the weapon out of its grasp. She swung the lit end of the staff at the control panel at the wall and a surge of sparks gushed from the box. A loud click followed and the restraints opened up on their hinges.

The second droid moved forward as its partner struggled to free its weapon from the wall. With split second timing, Rey dodged the stabbing motion of the droids staff as she rolled from the table. She hit the floor face first and felt herself lose lungs full of air for a second time that day. There was no time to think about pain or weariness, though. Rey moved to her feet just in time for the droid's next attack. This time, she ducked beneath the arc of its swing and placed herself against its chest, with her own against the metal rod. She took hold of it and pushed away from the droid until it let go of the weapon and stumbled backward.

For months, she had honed her skill with a lightsaber, but a staff, that was like an extension of her own body. On Jakku, metal rods weren't hard to come by while scavenging. They could be weapons, or walking sticks, or levers to push aside heavy debris. A decade of practice made her much deadlier with this sort of weapon than she expected she would ever be with a lightsaber.

Metal against metal clanked behind her. It was the footsteps of the other droid. It had wrenched its weapon free from the control panel and was moving toward her. She turned just in time to see it swinging the blue, sparking end of of its staff. Gracefully, she stepped aside and lunged with the end of her own staff at the droid's abdomen. The thing convulsed momentarily and fell toe the floor.

Her other opponent came at her full force, hands groping for her throat. Rey beat at him. One. Two. Three swings. Every one made contact, driving the mechanical man backward until finally she threw her shoulders into a powerful swing at the thing's head. The blow left the bucket of a head hanging be a wire as its red glowing eyes faded.

Rey bent over, holding her knees. She needed to catch her breath, but there was no telling if or when her captor would return. He might already know she had freed herself.

The doors slid open, but luckily there were no more guards. If Kylo Ren had truly learned from his past mistakes, he would have posted more guards. Rey looked at the passageway. It was small, cluttered with pipes and vents. The lighting was dim at best. This was no Star Destroyer. It must have been no bigger than the Falcon. Perhaps, she could defeat Kylo Ren and take control of the ship before it reached its destination.

She did not have her lightsaber, she considered. And a fight between the two of them could easily result in important life support systems for the ship being damaged. All she needed was a stray lightsaber slash at her creating a leak in the ventilation system, in hyperspace, no less! But if she couldn't pilot the ship, what were her other options?

Rey looked overhead and found what looked like the hyperdrive conduit line and began following it. It lead to a rusty rectangle jutting out of the ceiling. Carefully, she removed the cover and found an array of blinking lights in red and greens and blues. It wasn't any model Rey had encountered during scavenging or on the Falcon, but she could figure it out given a minute or two.

"YOU!" She turned to see the black clad, would-be Vader down the passageway. Steam from pipes lining the walls partially hid his form. It made him appear to glide as he marched forward.

There would be no minute or two. Time and planning were not luxuries she had. Instinct and luck would be her allies from that point. The blinking green button was next to the reactor indicator, just like on Lambda-class T-4a shuttles. If the Force truly was with her, then maybe her next action would get her closer to freedom. She threw her hand at the green button with absolute commitment.

Nothing happened. Kylo Ren was feet from her. Rey positioned herself for the oncoming brawl. But before either of them could move to attack the floor moved beneath them. Rey found herself falling forward, her feet lifting from the deck as the incline became steeper. Kylo Ren's arms shot out to his sides and waved comically as he attempted to stay balanced, but he was falling backward as she fell forward toward him.

Then, they were falling. The passageway was vertical and the two fell downward. The bodies fell at the same rate, meaning Rey could never reach Kylo Ren, not unless some other force acted on her. Of course, another force could. He reached upward with a gloved hand and she felt the Force pulling her closer to him. She didn't have time to fight it. He had his arms around her, a hand holding the back of her head as it lay against his chest.

The deck of the ship moved again. This time, it corrected itself. The bitter enemies hit the metal grating of the ship's floor hard before rolling several feet. Rey felt the impact, but she was mostly unharmed, save a few scratches. Kylo Ren's helmet had large gashes of silver from the tumble against the floor. Rey pushed herself up from Kylo Ren who lay on his back. The index finger from the hand that had cradled her head bent backward. He gasped as he tried to prop himself up.

"Are you okay?" He asked. Red lights flashed and a purple R4 unit beeped at them as it tried to get around Kylo Ren who was by then sitting up. There was no time for Rey to consider responding or for the little R4 unit to get to whatever needed repairs. The ship once again began swaying. There were loud bangs and flashes of light and what sounded like an explosion, then everything went black.

The next time Rey opened her eyes, she was blanketed in white powder. And she was cold. Unbelievably cold. Just ahead of her, the smuldering wreckage of the black transport ship lay with a tower of smoke rising from it. Cut and bruised, Rey limped toward it. Yes, Kylo Ren may have survived the crash. Yes, he could take her easily in her injured state. But as she looked around, all she saw was white plains, full of snow and cold. If she were going to survive and get help, she needed supplies from the ship. At the very least she needed warmer clothing to put over her tan Jedi robes.

Rey found a monstrous hole in the side of the vessel and kept her head low, beneath smoke and other unknown fumes as she searched desperately for any sort of supplies. Left, right, another left. She must remember which way she came or she might die in there if she didn't find her way back out. Then, without truly knowing where she was headed, she found the cockpit. Inside, near tattered droid pilots, strapped to the wall, was an emergency pack. The bundle was nearly as tall as she was, but that could only mean there would be lots of supplies within.

Retracing her path, Rey was nearly out of the wreckage, when she came across him. He was dragging himself across the metal grating with his left hand and his right arm was motionless at his side. He had discarded his helmet at some point as he tried to make his escape. All she could see was his mussy, jet black hair, but that was enough. Without wanting to, she felt a great deal of sympathy for him. He had killed Han Solo and who knew how many others; she should have let him die there. She couldn't do it. Luke might have told her that compassion for an enemy symbolized strength and the light side. Rey knew that it was weakness. She knew it would be better to leave him to die. Better for her and better for the galaxy. But she could not bring herself to do it.

It took her another trip to retrieve the emergency kit after she had pulled Kylo Ren to safety. He didn't speak as she took his and her lightsabers from his hip. He only looked at her with those sad brown eyes. It unsettled her to have him watch her put the stakes in the ground for the tent. Nor did she like the way his eyes followed her as she pulled of the wet, bloody Jedi robes to huddle under the blanket.

She wasn't worried about him for the time being. She could sense the weakness in his body. He needed her to keep him alive. He wouldn't hurt her for now. But how long until she needed to worry? She had two lightsabers, but she couldn't stay awake to guard him day and night.

Rey fidgeted with the portable navigator. It was searching for their current location in the galaxy. As soon as she knew what system they were on, she could decide her next move. Luke had been teacher her about several systems and if she were lucky he would have taught her something useful about whatever chunk of ice she had crashed into. A beep from the handheld device told her it had determined their location.

The planet's name was Hoth.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The wind howled, making the canvas walls of the tiny tent beat furiously. The three moons were hidden by dense cloud, making the night pitch black. Not that Rey needed to see to know the only thing out there was a field of white snow and ice, surrounded by white, jagged mountain peaks.

Inside, Rey huddled under her blankets next to a dull gray box that stood about a foot tall. It gave off a comforting orange glow accompanied by an even more comforting amount of heat. Across from her lay Kylo Ren on his back fast asleep. He had the comfort of sleeping. He knew that she had saved him just a few hours before and that he would be safe with her watching over him. Rey could not say she felt the same. He was injured and weak, to be sure, but after all he had done to her and her friends, could she really sleep peacefully mere feet away from the man?

Bloody Jedi robes sat near the heater. There was blood from a wound she received in the crash. Rey managed to stitch up the wound just to the right of her belly button and was just grateful that she had only been slashed and not impaled in the crash. She had spent the day getting the two of them to safety from the crash site and setting up there tent in time for nightfall. Now that she could rest, Rey couldn't bring herself to do it. Under the blanket, where she sat huddled and cross-legged, she clutched the pair of lightsabers. Her anxiety was getting the better of her, she knew, but it had been a rough day, after all.

Eventually, despite all her efforts, exhaustion overcame the Jedi apprentice and she dozed off. When she awoke, there was a salty smell in the air and the sound of grease popping as bacon sizzled. Rey shot up with cat-like reflexes causing her blanket to slip down, exposing her bare breasts. Kylo Ren looked up from the frying pan that sat over the heater with wide brown eyes. The bacon continued to sizzle and hot grease flew up at his good, left hand.

"What in the galaxy do you think you're doing?" Rey quickly wrapped herself in the blanket again. "How long have you been awake? What have you done?"

"I cooked breakfast. That should be obvious," he said coolly. "The rest of the rations are protein blocks, so we should enjoy what may be our last good meal for a long time." There was a strange sense of satisfaction in the way he said that. It was almost as if he were happy to be there with the threat of starving and freezing to death looming over the two of them.

"I suspect the First Order will be here soon," she replied. "I'll be ready for them when they come to rescue you. They'll trade me their ship for you and you'll order them to do so."

The smug man laughed at that. "You won't get the chance to ransom me, Jedi. I have been keeping all my movements secret. It was the best way to catch you. The First Order has no idea where I've been or where I was going." There was mischief in his eyes. He was enjoying this twisted state of affairs. "They have no idea that I captured you or that I was on my way back to Supreme Leader Snoke. We may be here for a very long time before anyone comes looking for us."

Kylo Ren removed the pan from atop the orange light of the heater and set it on a metal tray to allow the fried meat to cool.

"So, what will you do now?" He was still so cocky. He was just like Han, she realized. "Will you kill me? You could, you know. I would put up one hell of a fight, but you could do it. Is that what you want? Tell me."

"I don't know, honestly."

The two of them ate in silence. Rey savored the greasy, salty meal. If the man across from her was not lying, then she should take his advice and enjoy real food while she had it. The protein bars would nourish the two of them for a week or two, but they would not be enjoyable.

When the meal was done, Rey ordered Kylo Ren to lay back down and not to make any sudden moves. He protested, though, and told her he needed to relieve himself. They crawled from the tent, Kylo Ren in front with his right arm in a sling and the index finger of his right hand in a splint. Rey wore her Jedi robes once again with dark grey jacket and pants from the emergency kit on top of them. She stood behind him with two lightsabers in hand. It took him a long time to undo his belt and pants with one good hand, but she was not about to help him with _that_. Rey tried her best to ignore the sounds of liquid hitting the snow as she turned her head to the side.

After the two had squeezed their way back into the tent, Rey again ordered Kylo Ren to lay down. This time he did as he was told. That should have made her feel a little better, but it only made her more suspicious of him. But he was weak and needed to heal much more than she did, so perhaps it was him just being selfish again. If Rey hadn't woken up, he probably would have claimed the bacon for himself.

Rey sifted through the contents of the emergency kit again. There were items for desert and jungle environments. Insect nets and water locators would not be very useful on Hoth. The snow gave them all the drinking water they needed and insects could not be that bad in the frigid landscape. Other items proved more useful, like goggles and binoculars.

Finally, Rey found the rescue beacon near the bottom of the sack. The only problem was that the beacon would only send a general distress signal to the entire galaxy. Anyone who might be monitoring emergency frequencies would be aware. The First Order could investigate if they chose. Or slavers. Anybody. And in the Outer Rim, as they were, there weren't very many benevolent heroes to be found. But, from what Rey had read on the portable navigation device, help from outside was their best hope of rescue. Hoth was absent of civilization. The most recent inhabitants had been during the days of the Empire when a handful of Rebel bases were active for a short period.

"I am going to check out the wreckage," Rey declared. She took the empty sack that had been the emergency kit and put the rescue beacon inside. Kylo Ren might have decided to activate it while she was away and Rey still wasn't sure if that was the best course of action, though it appeared to be the only one at the moment.

"I don't know what you expect to find. I remember the ship being a burning pile of trash the last time I saw it."

"You were half-conscious the last time you saw it. I grew up as a scavenger. That ship was much better off than many I've seen. I can find plenty of useful things to use." She scooped up a respirator mask, just in case there were any dangerous gas leaks.

Rey had dragged Kylo Ren much farther than was probably necessary. When she left the tent and looked out toward the crash site, only a small black speck was visible. But it was better to be at a safe distance than to be too close to burning wreckage and who knew what sort of explosive materials onboard. The chill of the wind bit against her cheeks. Whoever had planned out the emergency kit knew they needed to put in some cold weather gear, but forgot to include anything to cover her face.

She crawled back into the tent and began wrapping the blanket around her head. It was awkward and bulky and she doubted it would stay secured. Then she heard a voice say, "Take this."

Kylo Ren held out his black cloak with his one good arm. She studied him carefully. His face seemed honest. More honest than it had a right to be.

"It will keep the wind off you," he announced.

"You're using me," Rey glared at him, still offering the cloak. "You're trying to win my trust, but I know what you'll do once you're strong enough. I know how you will be when you have the First Order behind you."

"I'll take you prisoner again. I'll take you to Supreme Leader Snoke, just like I planned to before you brought here. But right now I need you." He fixed his eyes on her. "You can take it or leave it." He tossed it down in her general direction.

The decision was more difficult than it ought to be, Rey knew. The cloak was exactly what she needed to trek through the windy tundra back to the ship. It was not that she didn't trust Kylo Ren. What harm could a black cloak possibly pose? But this felt like more than eating the rations she needed to keep herself going. This was wearing something of his. It was bad enough that she held onto his lightsaber, the same one that killed Han. But she needed to do that to keep it out of Kylo Ren's hands. This felt much more personal. It was a choice she had.

In the end, she took the blanket she had been trying to make a scarf and used her lightsaber to cut thick strip from it. She tied it up and around her head and face. The sulky man with the mop of black hair just stared at her lifelessly as she went about the work. In the end, her face was no longer visible beneath the goggles and makeshift scarf.

Kylo Ren looked up at her wordlessly as she kicked the cloak back to him. "Jedi scum!" And then he took his left arm and slammed a fist into his right arm hanging by the sling. "Ungrateful!" Another blow. Tears welled up in his eyes and his face was red. "Just go! Leave me in peace!" He fell backward clutching his mangled arm.

Rey marched toward the crash site, still dumbfounded by the event. Up until then, she could explain away all of his helpful actions as a way of keeping her, his prisoner, safe and helping himself. That last dramatic, frightening display was something else. He was offended that she hadn't accepted his help. His reaction to it was scary and mentally deranged, but definitely sincerely disappointed.

What bothered her more than his reaction was how she felt afterward. Going against everything she knew she should feel about him, Rey wanted to apologize. She was here once more. Knowing that Kylo Ren was despicable and downright evil should have made it impossible to feel any sort of sympathy for him. But she did. Was it because she was a good person or because she was weak? Before she rescued her enemy from certain death, she would have believed it took more strength to feel sympathy for one's enemies, but now she wasn't so certain. When it came down to killing an injured man, she couldn't manage it. In the heat of battle, she had killed to defend herself, but this was not a fight. Killing Kylo Ren would be an execution at this point.

She wouldn't think about it. It was a piece of clothing. There were no executions or anything of the sort to worry about at the moment. If he was offended, that was on him. Rey had chosen to keep him safe and alive, but that didn't mean she needed to make him happy, too.

Daylight on Hoth lasted about ten hours. Rey had not been awake when the sun rose, but she still had plenty of time to trek to the ship and back. There was a nostalgic feel to her journey across the white wasteland. And having spent half of her life in the same colony, on the same planet, she did not get to feel nostalgic often. She was travelling across an empty landscape to scavenge for usable parts from a ship beyond repair. This time it happened to be cold and snowy instead of hot and sandy.

At first she came passed scraps of twisted, black metal. Then, a heap of droid limbs. Then a massive black wing sticking jutting vertically from the ground. Finally, the main body of the vessel half buried in the snow and rock. Rey climbed in through the hold that she had escaped and began her search.

The cockpit's radio was damaged in the crash. Rey studied for twenty minutes, trying to make heads or tails of it, but she had become most familiar with engines and other systems that just kept ships in the air. She knew a few things about weapon systems, too, but communication devices weren't very important at the market. The beacon was still her best hope for rescue, it appeared. There were some blasters in a small armory she decided could be used for hunting. She didn't know what a tauntaun or a wampa tasted like, but she might soon find out. In a maintenance closet, there were some fuel cells the heater could use, which was the best find by far. There was no telling how long the heater had been sitting there, so its fuel cells could dry up sooner than expected.

Rey eventually discovered what had been Kylo Ren's cabin. It was a small, cramped thing with an uncomfortable cot and a small chest tucked under it. Inside there was a multitude of black garments. If the pair ran short of fuel cells for the heater, they would need as many layers as possible to survive the nights. On the floor, near the bed, was a palm-sized communicator, or so Rey initially thought. On closer inspection she realized it was a voice recorder. If it was Kylo Ren's then he may have recorded secrets that could aid the Resistance against the First Order.

A tiny display let scroll through the device's archives. Rey picked a date at random and played the recording.

"Hux blames me personally for the defeat. He's taken away all of my Stormtroopers. Supreme Leader Snoke is out of contact. Hux won't take any of my threats seriously. He's too damn smart. He knows the Snoke would punish me severely. For now, I need a new plan."

It was hard to feel sorry for him. If Rey had to choose her favorite person from the First Order, this Hux would be it. She clicked the next recording.

"I have found an old Separatist droid factory from the days of the Clone Wars. The surviving droids were in a zombie-like trance when I first arrived. They weren't in low power mode; they were active, but they just stared into space. When they realized a person had arrived they swarmed me. I had to destroy a dozen before they stopped. They begged to serve me. I had never given it much thought, but droids are built to serve and if they don't have a job, then they apparently become depressed."

Rey had a fondness for droids. It was a sad story, though the voice that told it didn't seem to have any emotional reaction to it, though he had witnessed it personally. The most interesting bit of the tale was that she had been lied to while she was held prisoner. Kylo Ren had led her to believe he was using droids so that she could not use her Force mind tricks against more Stormtroopers.

Then, Rey clicked the most recent recording.

"That woman is infuriating! She thinks she knows me. She shuns me and the dark side. I must convince her to join me. Snoke will order me to kill her if she doesn't join us. I will do it if I am ordered to, but I don't _WANT_ to. I am trying to _SAVE HER_! But how do I do it? She thinks the dark side is only about murder and power, but she's wrong. It is about fulfilling one's desires. It is about embracing the strength of all one's emotions. She holds back. She's holding so much back. She could be so much stronger if she only knew how to harness that pain and loneliness inside of her... Wait. What is that?"

The recording ended. He must have been recording it right before she caused their ship to crash. She stood in his quarters for a long time staring at the recorder. How odd that he wanted to "save her." He was a man who barely flinched when killing his own father. She had seen him hesitate, yes, but he did it all the same. Why should he care so much about killing her?

Strangely enough, she felt a lightness in her chest thinking about it. Why should that make her feel so happy? She was embarrassed of herself in that moment and threw the recorder at the floor. There was a loud clanking of metal against metal and she observed the device and split in two, exposing its electronic innards.

When Rey emerged from the ship once again, she could tell night wasn't that far off. She needed to hurry with the bag of supplies or be caught in deadly temperatures. As it was, she could feel the bite of the wind through all her layers of Jedi robes and the set of jacket and pants from the emergency kit. She tightened the scarf and wiped fog from her goggles before jumping down to the snow covered ground.

From afar nothing seemed amiss at the tent. She could only make out the dull brown of the canvas through her tinted goggles, but she knew it was there. However, as she approached closer, she saw that the tent was lopsided and stakes were missing. Hastily, Rey rushed to the campsite.

There was a puddle of water and ice where the heater had been knocked into the snow. The protein blocks were tossed about and a few showed signs that someone or something had tasted them. Then, she saw the blood. The bright red streak went in a line across the snow where something had been dragged away from the tent.

This was bad. What was she going to do? What happened? Where was he? Was he dead? Should she follow the trail with night fast approaching? No, no, no, no, no! What was she going to do? She had to decide soon.

She was hesitant and uncertain, but in the end, Rey followed the trail in the snow that Kylo Ren had made as he had been dragged off. They might both be dead by morning, she reflected, but she had an inexplicable need to save him just as strange as his desire to save her.


	3. Chapter 3

Rey set out from the tattered remains of the tent where she dropped the scavenged supplies from the ship. She traced the path where Kylo Ren's body had been dragged through the snow, speckling it with bright red blood. Night was approaching and she might freeze before catching up to whoever, or whatever, had left the carnage in its wake. If she wanted to stay warm, she needed all the layers she could cover herself in. It was for that reason she trudged along in the black cloak with the hood pulled up.

The wind beat at her and the cloak flapped in response. Where ever he was, he wasn't wearing anything suitable for the planet. Rey hoped that his captors had taken him somewhere out of the elements.

The circumstances of his disappearance baffled her as she made her way through the icy valley. There weren't supposed to be any settlements there, so who could have gone through the trouble of attacking the camp? Any wild animal would have just killed and eaten him then and there, right? Or maybe not. She hadn't taken the time to read the navigator's entries on wampas and tauntauns, the two most numerous life forms on the planet. If she had, maybe she'd know exactly what to expect at the end of the path.

Thankfully, there was a path to follow. Snows weren't falling at the moment, but if they had been, Kylo Ren would be completely on his own because Rey would have had no way of finding him. It didn't appear that he could do anything on his own, especially now that he had sustained new injuries. For the second time in as many days, Rey held his life in his hands.

If she was lucky he would be dead when she found him. Her conscience wouldn't allow her to kill him or let him die, but this was something out of her control. Even that didn't make her feel good about it. No matter the number of times she told herself that this was as much as the murdering, would-be-Sith deserved, she still hoped he was okay. If he died now Rey would be alone on the planet, something she knew she could manage, but desperately did not want to.

Now that she had activated the rescue beacon, hopefully someone with good intentions would see the signal and come to their aid. The beacon was tucked safely in one of the inner pockets of the black cloak. If help did come, then they could find her regardless of where she might be.

Darkness soon enveloped her. The blue Skywalker lightsaber she had received from Luke barely illuminated anything. Grudgingly, Rey held Kylo Ren's lightsaber in her left hand and studied it beneath the pale, blue glow of her own. He _KILLED_ Han with it. In a sudden fit of rage, she threw the ugly thing with all the strength her arm would allow.

 _Damn it_ , she thought, as she hunched down looking for the lightsaber in the snow. _Damn everything_ , she cursed internally, as she struggled to find the path in the snow once again. Both lightsabers lit the way for her. Yes, a flashlight would have been much better as far as lighting went, but there was a warm glow radiating from the sabers that helped keep the Death's icy fingers at bay.

Without warning she came upon it. A wall of gray metal. There weren't supposed to be any settlements on Hoth, so where did the building come from and who was in it? Outlaws was the best guess she had. She was having a hard time feeling her nose by this point and her range of movement in all the layers of clothing would be less than ideal. Not to mention the aches in her muscles from her walk and the injuries from the crash. How many were there? Could she handle even one?

The path in the snow ended. The captors must have stopped dragging him and picked him up to carry inside. With how cold she was, could he still be alive after having his head against the snow for so long? There weren't any rocks to bump against, but she imagined he would still have some lumps. He was a freak and enjoyed his injuries, she recalled, but would he be beating against his lumpy, bleeding head the next time he threw a fit? No, he probably wasn't even still alive, her brain told her. Don't let that be, she prayed.

Rey attached Kylo Ren's lightsaber hilt to her belt and disengaged her blue one, but held it ready to use it if an enemy attacked. With her left hand against the cold metal, she followed the wall. Her boots made the snow crunch and she feared every step would alert whatever guards were posted. In her right hand, the lightsaber hilt was out and ready to go at any moment. The wall angled around until she came across a small, chest high wall that struck out from the main wall.

Should she follow it or climb over the wall and follow the main one? In the dark, there was no telling how far either one went. In the end, she followed the smaller wall, keeping low to the ground so that no guards saw her if they were somewhere on the other side. In her mind, Rey tried to imagine the structure she was circling, but couldn't manage to make sense of it. Perhaps, she should have gone the other way around to find an entrance.

At the end of the short wall it all became obvious what the structure was. There were two huge circular structures at the end of the wall. She had made a home of an AT-AT just like this one. The thing was on its side in a way similar to the way hers had been on Jakku. Nobody had opened up the hatch on the foot she was in front of, so their entrance must have been somewhere else on the body.

Between the shivering and anxiety to find Kylo Ren, she had forgotten the training she had worked so hard at. One of the first things Luke had instructed Rey to do in situations like this was to feel out her surroundings. She had no idea where her enemies were. Or how many. So, she felt for them. Like a spider at the center of a web, she could feel the vibrations on each string as another life force stirred. There were three, she knew. One was faint, just barely holding on. That was Kylo Ren. The other two didn't feel like any species she had encountered before. But she spent half of her life on one planet and the galaxy was full of diverse beings. Could there be droids, too, she wondered. There was no way of knowing until she went inside.

From what she could tell, the creatures were in the main body of the AT-AT. If she were quiet she could open the foot hatch up and crawl up the access tunnel of the leg to surprise them. The hatch wouldn't budge, much to her dismay. The machine had sat in the snow for decades. It was like a layer of ice had welded the door shut. It looked like she would be opening it the hard way.

In a time consuming effort, Rey used her lightsaber to penetrate the cold metal. Steam came off of it as water evaporated. The heat of it was a welcome sensation. She drew a circle, just big enough for her to squeeze through, then grabbed at the hatch's handles in the center of the glowing orange circle she had traced and pulled it out. The process didn't make any more noise than the creaking of metal Rey could hear up the shaft.

When the metal stopped glowing and was cool to the touch, Rey pulled herself through. The mechanical working of the legs pressed in on her as she shuffled up the access tunnel. There was no wind inside, but it was unbearably cold in the metal tube. Every once in a while she stopped and sensed for her enemies again. They seemed to be staying still. Asleep? Or next to a heater. Oh, how she missed that small box at the tent. Before she left, Rey had set the thing right side up and turned it off. Everything else could be fixed later, but that would be the difference between life and death if she survived long enough to get back to the camp.

Finally she was in the main compartment of the beast. With the AT-AT on its side, the floor was to her left and all the machinery that drove the giant was coming out of that side. There were boilers and pistons and pipes of every size that were all horizontal to her. Quietly as possible, Rey slithered through them on her way to Kylo Ren's faint signal.

There was no light within. No source of heat. No noises that might indicate a droid or communications equipment the outlaws might be monitoring. She was beginning to think these weren't people at all.

Without warning there was a thundering crash as a hairy white paw burst through a gap in the pipes ahead of Rey. An angry roar accompanied it. Then, another roar joined it. The walls shook and sang to the stomps of the abominable snowmen as they lumbered at her. Rey crawled backward and up and around and squeezed through objects as she backtracked. There was no time to think. Just run. Growl and grunt and roar. They were smashing through their cave. They got stuck from time to time and paced to and fro, looking for an opening to crawl through or one would begin tearing at the pipes or metal structures in front of it.

When she felt her back hit the rear of the compartment, she knew there was nowhere else to run. The monsters wouldn't fit in the tunnel that led down the leg, but she'd be running away and leaving Kylo Ren to die in there. There was a clanking of metal as they broke pipes and stomped onward toward her. She could make out tall, hulking figures with tusks sticking out the sides of their heads. One of them was doing a much better job of squeezing through the wreckage than its friend.

Rey pulled out her lightsaber and ducked beneath a massive claw. With a spinning motion she sliced the creature's stomach open and a pile of gray snake-like entrails fell out, accompanied by a gag-inducing stench. The hairy, white ape stumble forward screaming in agony and swiped weakly at the human intruder.

The bellowing of the second creature announced its approach. Rey turned to face the menace but found herself colliding with cold steel and a bath of warm blood. She had slipped in the first creature's blood. It still made faint groaning noises behind her, but mostly lay as its life's blood flowed out.

Where was her lightsaber? It had rolled somewhere out of sight. It took another moment for the furry thing to make its way to her. It towered above the young woman. Time slowed for her as fear took hold. Heavy puffs of white fog accompanied each breath from the fanged mouth. Cold, black eyes glared down at her. A paw raised, preparing to bear down on her.

It stayed there. It should have come down on her, but nothing happened. The creature twisted and writhed as if tethered by a series of invisible ropes.

"DO! SOMETHING!" Kylo Ren's voice shouted at her from a distance. Cut and bruised and broken as he was, he stood with his left arm outstretched, struggling to hold back the monster.

How stupid of her, Rey scolded herself. She had frozen in a life or death moment and it should have meant death, but the one person in all the galaxy whom she did not want to be saved by had come to her rescue. She fumbled beneath the black cloak and pulled out her enemy's lightsaber. It exploded into a brilliant red cross that illuminated the chamber.

Rey made the weapon dance in her hands as she lopped off the monster's threatening arm, then as Kylo Ren lost his strength to hold the beast, she dismembered the second arm. Its white fur was awash in red. Finally, with a decisive slice, she took off the creature's head.

When the ordeal had concluded, Rey crawled through the chaos left by the creatures to find Kylo Ren slumped over a large set of gears. He looked worse than when she had left him at the tent that morning. His right eye was was nasty shades of black and blue. And swollen shut on top of that. His right arm was no longer held securely by the sling she had made and dangled freely at his side. His black clothing hid the color of blood, but Rey could see that there were wet portions of clothing that clung to his belly that must have been blood.

"Are you okay," Rey asked him as she helped him to the piles of rock and dirt where the creatures slept. The debris kept them from making contact with the cold metal of the AT-AT. Rey noticed tiny pine needles and twigs and wondered how far away the forest was. She hadn't seen anything that looked like a tree since they crashed, but she had wandered miles in the dark and could have walked right through the woods without knowing.

"Pain is strength," the dark haired man replied. His brown eyes studied her reaction. He could tell she didn't understand what he meant, but he wanted her to. "My power flows from the dark side. A Sith, a Ren, those Dathamir witches, we all suffer to some extent and then we unleash it ten fold on our enemies."

"I'm sorry I asked." Rey pulled off the cloak and handed it to the battered man at her feet. She began sorting through twigs and climbed back into the wreckage away from the nest.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for something to make a fire with," she snapped at him. "We might have survived those things, but we'll die if we can't keep warm through the night."

"You won't find anything. Our best chance is to cut open those wampas and sleep in their abdomens." He said it with a straight face as she looked back at him.

"THOSE are wampas?" She was shocked. They were much more threatening than their names would suggest.

"You won't find anything for a fire. We'd suffocate from all the smoke. Come over here, Jedi."

As much as it loathed her to admit it, he was right. The idea of sleeping in a wampa corpse was enough to upset her stomach, but what other option did they have? Rey weaved her way back through the junked interior of the AT-AT to Kylo Ren who had laid his cloak over him like a blanket.

"Lay down with me," he commanded her.

There was an automatic, uncalled for furrowing of Rey's brow and crinkling of her nose. She reacted to the idea with more disgust than she had when he suggested sleeping in corpses.

"Why do you think I would ever-"

"Because if you don't you'll freeze. It is between me and the wampa stomach. In all honesty, I don't think I have the strength to get back up to crawl inside one of those, so if you don't lay here with me I'll probably die."

He was giving her no choice in the matter. Damn him to Hell. For a long time she stood there, not looking directly at him as he kept a steady gaze on her with his one good eye.

"You are trying my patience. If you are going to let me die, then at least have the decency to kill me yourself. Stop all of this nonsense of saving me, then contemplating leaving me to freeze in my sleep."

With a heavy sigh, Rey slipped under the cloak. At first, they only lay side-by-side, but Rey knew that wasn't helping at all. With Kylo Ren injured and in intense pain, Rey had to turn herself and press her body to his. She hated herself for it, but soon enough they both stopped shivering and by the time they awoke they had become entangled.

Rey first sounds as she came to consciousness were the steady sounds of Kylo Ren's beating heart. She had somehow managed to press herself against his chest in her sleep. It felt nice, she realized. Out in the frosty valley she had forgotten they were bitter enemies. She had forgotten all the atrocities he had committed and the monsters he served. Rey didn't have the time to think about how Luke and Chewbacca must be worried. This was just them. The only two people on an unforgiving world.

With those thoughts in mind, Rey closed her eyes and hoped Kylo Ren would sleep just a little longer because when he did she would once again face the hard reality of their hopeless situation.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Just beneath the unforgiving, white landscape of Hoth, dug into a mountain and beneath the valley, there was an abandoned Rebel base from a war that still raged out in the stars. Names and faces changed, but the war was more or less the same. Much like an ant colony, tunnels spread and twisted through the snow and ice and rock. For the first time in thirty-some-odd years strings of bulbs nailed to the sides of the tunnel walls were dimly lit the passageways.

Down there, in one particular room, Rey sat in silence, bundled in a black cloak. The fuel cells for the generator were still functioning, but the lightbulbs themselves were not so hardy. While light was certainly necessary inside the base, Kylo Ren and Rey could manage in the reduced visibility. The two had been fortunate to find the hospital section of the base practically untouched by the Empire's assault. And luckiest of all, the medicine and the equipment were still in working order.

Rey huddled near a heater, mesmerized by the nude male form that floated in a cylinder of medicine-infused water. There was a mask attached to his face with a hose that supplied oxygen running out of the tank. Kylo Ren's thick black hair floated in an eerie, hypnotic manner. Rey could stare as much as she pleased because the patient in the Bacta Tank had been put into an induced coma for the healing process. That did not mean she wasn't ashamed of herself for it. Her curiosity, however, had gotten the better of her.

Since the night they had pressed to each other for the warmth needed to survive, Rey had known what the feeling growing within her was. Like her peeping, she was ashamed of that feeling. It was not that she was too tough to have a crush or to desire the touch of a man. Not at all. She spent half her life dreaming of a hero that never came to whisk her away from Jakku and reunite her with her family, then marry her. The man she was admiring now was no hero. Not a white knight or a swashbuckling ship captain. He was everything she should despise and yet in the span of two weeks she had begun to forget why she was supposed to hate him.

Of course, she knew WHY she should hate him. She knew the deaths and the mask and the First Order all too well. Those feelings of hate and disgust just would not come when she called them. In their place, there was admiration for his cute face and now his exposed body. Where she should hate him for murdering his own father, there was gratitude for how he had saved her multiple times. He was evil. In her mind Rey knew it and all the reasons for it. Out here, though, when the two of them needed each other to survive, they had been given a clean slate. The past couldn't possibly matter when each day up until they discovered Echo Base the two of them had continuously been an inch from death.

Suddenly, a series of beeps sounded from the console near the tank. The unexpected noise startled Rey out of the fantasies that played in her head and she ran to the controls. Kylo Ren was waving about in the water as he woke from the coma disoriented and confused.

After a minute of confused scurrying about, Rey figured out how to drain the tank and found a mechanical hoist to pull the newly healed Kylo Ren out of the healing chamber. She kept her head turned to one side as he took a towel from him.

"You could let me use my cloak," he suggested. Rey began to remove it, now embarrassed, until he said, "Never mind. I smell like that awful water. I don't want my clothing to stink."

Rey did find some suitable clothing that had been abandoned in a trunk when the Rebels fled. Kylo Ren ripped the red Rebel insignia off the chest before he wore it. The tan and white colors didn't compliment him as well as his signature black outfit, but he'd be warm.

"Were you able to find any communication equipment?" It was the first thing Kylo Ren asked her.

"No," she responded, "The Empire destroyed the communications array when they attacked this base. There aren't any salvageable ships in the hangar either. There are rations and heaters to keep us from dying, but I don't think we're going to get off of this planet anytime soon."

Why was he smiling all of a sudden? He seemed relieved to hear that. Without meaning to, Rey prodded at his thoughts.

"Don't do that!" The smile turned to rage in the twinkling of an eye. Then, he saw the Skywalker lightsaber hilt in Rey's hand. "I'm sorry. Just stay out of my head. I'll show you the same courtesy."

"I didn't mean to," Rey apologized.

They eyed each other for a long time. Neither one was willing to forgive the other or ready to end the confrontation. Kylo Ren was expecting an apology, Rey decided, but she wasn't going to show weakness to him now. When he had been in the tank for those days she could let herself be stupid, but now that he was out and recovering, he was a threat again.

Hours later, Kylo Ren sat on the floor in front of a heater and Rey sat atop a crate. They ate their protein block rations wordlessly. Now that Kylo Ren was stronger, Rey struggled to decide what she should do. When he was battered and broken and reliant on her to live, she could sleep soundly. Was he strong enough now to fight her? It wouldn't matter if he attacked her in her sleep. There must be a prison cell somewhere in the base, but she should have thought to look for it while Kylo Ren had been in the Bacta Tank. Now it was probably too late.

As the hours passed in silence, Rey began to tire. The man across from her looked lost in thought, but his face showed no sign of fatigue. He had been sleeping for days, so it stood to reason that he might not want to sleep for quite a while. She would need to do something and if she waited any longer she might get too tired to do anything effective.

"We need to find the brig," Rey announced.

"Why would we do that?"

"Because," she told him, "I need to sleep and I can't with you roaming free and healthy."

There was a change in his face. Rey felt his reaction as well, though she did not mean to. It was a sense of abandonment, as if Rey's mistrust was a betrayal on her part.

Kylo Ren stretched the arm that had been broken to once again test it. "You still don't trust me," he stated.

"Why would I? You said yourself when we first landed here that you were helping me so that you could survive. You still want to take me to Snoke." Kylo Ren looked away.

"Yes, but to save you," he mumbled.

"Did you say to save me? From what?"

"FROM THE LIGHT!" He was up. He kicked a crate and sent the contents on top sliding across the snow covered floor. "You think that the light side is good and the dark side is evil. The Jedi came up with those names to make themselves seem more pure." Kylo Ren paced the room as Rey held tight to her lightsaber beneath the black cloak.

Rey hadn't considered that before. What did the light side or dark side mean? Until then, it seemed obvious that light was good and dark was evil, but those were names given to separate qualities of the force. Luke hadn't talked at all about light or dark other than alluding to how terrible the dark side was. Was there more to it? Or was this a trap? If Kylo Ren kept talking, she might let her guard down.

"What is the dark side, then, if not evil? How can you not consider murdering your own father evil? How can you justify any of the atrocities you've committed?"

"I had to," Kylo Ren began. "You don't know what they did. Luke, my father, and my mother. You wouldn't believe me if I told you that they have their own sins to answer for. You already love them like I did when I was a stupid child."

"Whatever they did it can't measure up to your sins." Rey's compassion for her enemy was weakening at the insult to her new family.

"I knew you wouldn't listen," he prattled on. "The light side is about self-sacrifice and servitude. The Jedi demand submission. It is slavery. Palpatine destroyed the Jedi Order and all of its mistakes. Luke had a chance to build something new and yet he tried to recreate everything he could find about the Jedi." Kylo Ren stopped pacing and faced Rey.

"The dark side," he continued, "Is giving in to your desires. It is using the Force for yourself. That, too, requires sacrifice, though." There was a sudden sadness in his voice. "I HAD to do it. I loved my father and that love would have kept me from becoming strong enough to achieve my goals."

"What goal could mean so much?"

"It doesn't matter now! You've ruined everything! I wanted to become stronger, but now you're here and I grow weaker every minute I'm with you."

Rey understood. If love for his father made him weak, then Rey being a weakness meant only one thing. The whole explanation was still mad. His reasoning did not make the dark side of the Force seem any less evil in her eyes. What was the use of all that power and selfishness if you had no one to love? The dark side seemed lonely and after half a life time alone Rey could not understand why Kylo Ren would abandon his family and friends for the power he spoke of.

"I don't know what you need all that power for," Rey began. "But if you don't want to hurt me, then it sounds like you should follow your feelings. You said the dark side is about giving in to desires."

Rey moved from her crate and stepped toward the man who had been her enemy. She noticed that Kylo Ren was wearing an outfit of white and tan that had belonged to someone who long ago fought the Empire. He was darkness garbed in light. What she failed to realize was that she wore a black cloak, enveloping her in darkness.

The two stood inches apart. Neither of them knew where to begin. Both of their lives had been void of any opportunity to experience romance. Yet there they stood. Awkwardly.

When Kylo Ren leaned forward, Rey pulled back in fear.

"You can trust me," he said to her.

"No, I can't."

"I'm not that person," he tried to convince her. "Not here, not now. With you, I want to be Ben Solo again. If we live to get out of here, then I have to finish what the other part of me started, but right here I'm not that person."

Nervously, Ben yanked off a glove. A shaky hand went to Rey's cheek in a slow, deliberate motion so as not to frighten her. The warmth of his touch was almost too much for Rey to bear. And a moment later their lips were pressed firmly together, their arms embracing each other.


End file.
